Once upon a time, film-makers were mysterious sorcerers hunched over Steenbecks and smoke machines, conjuring cinematic magic from the recesses of their cerebellums. These days it seems they spend half their time on Reddit, fighting like gremlins to stay one step ahead of the hive mind.
This week, Spider-Man: No Way Home director Jon Watts revealed that his original plan for the grand entrance of the Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield versions of Spider-Man in the blockbuster Marvel epic was to have them turn up following the death of Aunt May, just as Spidey was at his lowest point. As our hero sheds tears on a grimy New York rooftop, the pair would enter through Doctor Strange portals at the perfect moment to reset the film and set Peter Parker on the path to redemption.
It was a perfectly serviceable plan to get the film moving again quickly before the entire multiplex ruined their popcorn with salty tears. But there was one tiny, weeny problem: the internet had thought of it first. “I was on Reddit, and I was looking at people who had already made fan art of, ‘This is probably what it’s going to be like when the two Spider-Men get revealed’,” Watts told Collider. [...]